Atmos Updates (or lack thereof)

As many of you may know, I sent my Ninja 2 in for repair a few weeks ago due to a faulty HDMI input that was no fault of any mistreatment on my behalf. When I sent it in (on a Wednesday) they confirmed that they had received it and promised me to have it returned within one to four business days. Theoretically, this means it should have been back to me over a week and a half ago.

Yesterday I sent an email their way, questioning what had happened with the unit since I hadn't received any updates on it yet. Today I received back a plethora of emails apologizing and confirming that my unit was officially moving along the repair process. It was put "on the bench" as they call it at around 7pm today, and had been shipped out with a new outer casing within 45 minutes. The kicker was the note they attached with the shipping confirmation - letting me know that there was "extensive damage to the outer case of the unit, but it has been repaired anyway and shipped out."

If this unit actually makes it back to me in the promised two days I will be absolutely amazed, 0/10 for customer service Atmos - zero out of ten.

Ninja 2 may be cheap, but what's the real cost?

Recently Atmos dropped the price of both their Ninja Star and Ninja 2 models and made them super affordable for entry level film makers such as us. But what is the real cost of this price drop?

My Ninja 2 broke within three weeks of me getting it. Perfectly kept, in its protective case, without abusing it on set at all. Then spontaneously it stops accepting HDMI input. I talked with our resident camera tech expert Phil Wacker, and although he graced me with some helpful advice it wasn't what I was hoping for.

Turns out (since PPECs owns several of them) that he'd actually opened one up in an effort to fix it, but found that the motherboard inside was so tiny and intricate that there is no way to fix it by hand. The mere fact, however, that the technology can be processed by one little motherboard is impressive within itself, but I digress. The point being that its made so cheaply that they can malfunction super easily. That combined with the fragility of the HDMI interface in general and the fact that it has no locking/holding mechanism definitely added to the problem. There is an addition that allows 3G SDI input, but at the same price as the unit itself.

Long story short, because of the cheap manufacturing tactics of Atmos I am unable to use my Ninja any further. It was too good to be true I guess.